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The collection of Sir William Holburne (1793-1874) forms the nucleus of the Holburne Museum of Art (M102). Sir William was a sailor in the Royal Navy who retired to Bath at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. He assembled  a remarkable collection of over 4,000 works of fine and decorative art and an extensive library in his Bath town house in Cavendish Crescent.  Widely known for his silver and Old Master paintings, Sir William also collected Italian bronzes and maiolica, porcelain, furniture, gems and portrait miniatures. A photograph of Sir William taken towards the end of his life shows him with two of his favourite porcelain figures (L630, C222). 

In 1882 the collection was bequeathed to the people of Bath by Sir William's sister, Mary Anne Barbara Holburne (1802-1882). Sir William's collection survives in the Museum virtually intact and it is a unique survival of a nineteenth-century townhouse collection. From the start the collection was intended to form the nucleus of a Museum of art for the city of Bath and since the Museum opened to the public in 1893 a further 2,500 objects have been acquired.